Thursday, February 12, 2009

A woman whose daughter was the last patient a doomed dentist treated testified Monday she saw a gunman pump three bullets into the doctor near a Queens park.

Marisol Ortiz - who acknowledged she never saw the killer's face - said she was sitting in her SUV with her daughter and nephew when they heard a gunshot from about two car lengths away.

She looked up to see the shooter with his right hand raised and a gun aimed point-blank at Dr. Daniel Malakov on Oct. 28, 2007. The doctor was walking with his 4-year-old daughter, Michelle.

"It seemed like when he did the first shot, he wanted Daniel to drop," she said of the gunman. "When Daniel was still standing, he stepped back, and that's when I heard the next two shots.

"At that point, I didn't see Daniel anymore."

The gunman then jogged away. Ortiz said she later saw Michelle being "cuddled" by a woman who led the little girl into the park.Prosecutors say the girl's mother, 34-year-old Mazoltuv Borukhova, hired killer Mikhail Mallayev for $20,000 to murder her estranged husband.

Malakov, 34, was taking his daughter to meet Borukhova at the Forest Hills park when he was murdered.

Ortiz was inside the slain orthodontist's Forest Hills office, getting her daughter's braces adjusted, just prior to the shooting.

The Long Island accountant testified she failed to pick Mallayev, 51, out of a lineup. Still, she provided a detailed account of the cold-blooded slaying.

"I saw Dr. Malakov a car or two in front of me," she recalled.

"Did you see anybody with him or by him?" asked prosecutor Brad Leventhal.

"A man," Ortiz replied. "They were right next to each other ... He was pointing his right hand."